“rent-seeking” has nothing to do with “seeking rent” or “renting something”.

Rent-seeking is the act of growing one’s existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, risk of growing political bribery, and potential national decline.

Successful capture of regulatory agencies (if any) to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their uncorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior.

Renk seekering and money changing nepo babies are running this country. This is what it looks like

So basically travel agents for thomas?

So, they need to raise prices so they can build more units in order to be able to provide lower prices? I understand the theory but it seems unlikely that’s what would happen.

More units or more affordable units would bring rent down overall

The sentiment is correct, but in practice (a) there isn’t enough land to build enough units and (b) the construction generally takes long enough that units not deemed “profitable enough” will simply not get built.

As for affordable units, some of the major drivers in cost for units is land acquisition and public service apportionment (producing water, power, and piping out shit and disposing of trash). As the density of communities increases, the cost to provide each increment of all of those increases. Additionally, providing new construction in dense city centers where other services existing (transportation, for ex) has higher than average costs due to the difficulty of working in proximity to other structures and active transport and to the increased cost of building vertically rather than horizontally. The alternative is to build lower-height accommodations in less dense/costly areas and have to recreate all of the services (transportation, shopping, etc.) in the new area, not to mention the inconvenience of being located remotely from the city center, increasing commute times for in-person workers.

Realistically, nobody is going to build low-cost housing in populous areas. There are enough people with enough money to saturate the market at high rates. Until that demand evaporates, supply will never outstrip it. If the owners could build more units cost-effectively they already would have. The owners of rent-stabilized real estate know the difficulty of building more units and just want to be able to charge “market rate” for their prime properties rather than go through the headache of building more housing.

From the article:

The petition to the right-wing court comes as the economic orthodoxy on rent control is shifting, with decades of empirical data showing that limiting rent increases does not get in the way of new construction, as economists long argued.

Because Black Rock and the other corporate mega landlords are on the panicking at the financial forecast for all their commercial offices investments, and they are not going to eat that loss themselves. They always find someone else to foot bill.

Damn it feels good to be elite

An amicus curiae brief is literally translated as friend of the court. It does not mean they are “friends” of court officials or that there’s corruption afoot. It nearly means they are adding their professional opinion on a court proceeding they believe to be in need of it.